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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The English Bible 



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American Eloquence 




AMERICAN 

BAPTIST PUBLICATIOl? 

SOCrETY 



IV> 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE 

IN 

AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 



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REV. T. E. BARTLETT 



\ APR17I89(., ^, 



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PHILADELPHIA 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
1420 Chestnut Street 



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Copyright i8q6 by the 
American liAPiisr Ji^ublication Society 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE 

IN 

AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 



A T the dawn of American history a remarkable con- 
junction of events has often been noticed. Two 
occurrences, as little noted at the time as any common- 
place of busy traffic to-day, have seemed, in the light 
of subsequent years, almost visibly to contain the ele- 
ments of future war. In the same year, the May- 
flower bore to New England the precious seed of Chris- 
tianity and constitutional Hberty and a Dutch man-of- 
war brought to Virginia the first freight of Negro slaves. 
Less dramatic in form, but not less significant, were the 
simultaneous completion of the English version of the 
Bible under the direction of King James and the be- 
ginning of the colonial age of America. 

The Bible of the Pilgrims and of their contemporary 
colonists was the finished product of the age of Bacon 
and Shakespeare, when the Anglo-Saxon speech had 
reached mature strength and had become prepared to 
receive in trust for posterity the living thoughts of 

3 



4 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

prophets and apostles. Leaving civilization, the colo- 
nists went forth beyond an almost untraversed sea to 
find homes for themselves and their children in settle- 
ments ^^ which vast woods surrounded and which still 
vaster woods separated from each other" ; but the 
speech uttered in those dismal dwellings and echoed in 
the primeval forest possessed the same elements as that 
which flowed in strength and richness from Cromwell's 
lips and Milton's pen. 

A century of colonial life brought no deterioration. 
The one household Book became the preserver of their 
mother-tongue. Their manners might suffer, their 
speech could not be materially impaired, for the oracle, 
to which they often resorted, taught with equal clear- 
ness the excellence of celestial wisdom and the purity 
of English speech. If the colonists failed to learn or 
follow the lesson of religion, the lesson of language 
they unconsciously learned by heart. After a century 
and a half of colonial Hfe, the revolutionary struggle, 
which was begun and maintained with the pen and only 
finished with the sword, revealed that on this side of 
the Atlantic the mother-tongue had lost nothing of its 
power or its purity. Masters of classic English rose up 
in the colonies to voice American rights and American 
patriotism and to be heard with admiration on the banks 
of the Thames. 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 5 

To trace the influence of the English Bible in a 
single branch of American literature will be enough. 
Spoken eloquence, having national fame, is our field of 
study. Our language there appears in the fullness of 
its power. When great ability in the man and magni- 
tude in the subject and the occasion conspire to hft 
both speaker and listening multitude above all common 
levels of thought and emotion, language becomes on 
the lips of the orator marvelous in its sway. Is the 
Bible's influence plainly seen in such kingly manifesta- 
tions of our speech? The eloquence of the pulpit, 
however just its fame, would furnish no proper ground 
for any generalizations concerning the influence of the 
sacred writings upon our literature. Eloquence pos° 
sessing national fame on national themes from other 
Hps will furnish a field large enough for such an exam- 
ination as we have in view — large enough to illustrate 
the Bible's influence upon American oratory. 

The speech of Patrick Henry, delivered in the Vir- 
ginia House of Burgesses, March 20, 1775, the burden 
of which was ^^war is inevitable," 
needs none of the help of tradi- Patrick Henry 
tion to make us feel its power. 
Even now on the cold page, the danger all past, our 
minds calm and critical, the words, though reproduced 



6 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUKJKCE 

from memory by those who heard them, retain the fire 
of a resistless passion, and almost conjure up the Brit- 
ish troops in the environs of Boston. Of that speech 
Jonathan Maxcy said : "It gave an impulse which 
probably decided the fate of America. ' ' The ' ' Vir- 
ginian Demosthenes ' ' was not so deficient in training 
as has been commonly beheved. The tribute which 
men have been wont to give to extraordinary genius is 
their wiUingness to beheve it almost miraculous. The 
schoolhouse, but not the school, was left when young 
Henry was only ten years old. After that age his 
father became his teacher and led him far into Latin, 
mathematics, and history, and a little way in Greek. 
A deeply religious atmosphere filled the home in which 
the boy grew up. At twelve years of age he came 
under the spell of Samuel Davies' pulpit oratory ; he 
was charmed, and on the way home from church was 
in the habit of giving his mother a full summary of 
each sermon. Till the end of his days he considered 
that preacher a prince among orators. In later life, as- 
sociating with men who were trained in college, he mag- 
nified his lack of such education as others had enjoyed, 
speaking at times too strongly of his meagre advan- 
tages. He drew on a reservoir of power which was 
full, astonishing the colonies as he manifested the tal- 
ents which Scotch parentage had given him, and which 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE / 

educated parents had polished better than even the son 
himself knew. With such a childhood and youth, it is 
little wonder that the Bible was always at the door of 
his hps. 

The speech on which his fame rests opens with a 
swift justification of the alarm the orator is about to 
sound. Only a few sentences are pronounced, and 
then words of Scripture appear as he asks : ' ' Are we 
disposed to be of the number of those who, having 
eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things 
which so nearly concern our temporal salvation ? ' ' 
Before the hearer is allowed a moment to break the 
force of that appeal by asking if the speaker himself 
feels the pain he is willing to cause others, the orator 
seizes a phrase of the book of Job, and moves on 
thus to complete the defense of his alarm : ' ' For my 
part, whatever ' anguish of spirit ' it may cost, I am 
willing to know the whole truth. " As a wise counselor 
he w^ould hold up for calm judgment the whole con- 
duct of the British ministry for the ten preceding years 
as forbidding the fond hope of peace. A verse from a 
psalm furnished the mold for the proposition : ' ^ I have 
but one ' lamp ' by which ' my feet ' are guided. ' ' One 
favorable manifestation toward the colonies on the 
heights of British power — the gracious reception of a 
late petition — he denounces as deceptive, and sharp- 



8 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

ens his warning with the well-remembered sign of treach- 
ery in the gospel history: ^^ Suffer not yourselves to 
be betrayed with a kiss. ' ' A picture of military prep- 
aration in England, the sole answer to repeated and 
humble petitions from America, prepares the way for the 
decision, repeated with emphasis: ^^We must fight,'' 
ending thus : ' ' An appeal to arms and to the ' God of 
hosts,' is all that is left us." The spell of inaction 
on the plea of weakness must be broken. Ridicule 
and alarm mingle in the question : * ' Shall we lie 
supinely on our backs — until our enemies shall have 
' bound us hand and foot ' ? " Hope must be en- 
kindled for the strife. ' ^ Three millions of people ' ' 
rise *' invincible " at the orator's word ; but like Heze- 
kiah, inspiring his terror-stricken people in the presence 
of Sennacherib's army, and with similar words, he turns 
to invisible help. ' ' Sir, we shall not fight our battles 
alone. There is a just God who presides over the af- 
fairs of nations, who will raise up friends to fight our 
battles for us. ' ' Without a pause he moves on with a 
fragment from Ecclesiastes : ^^The battle, sir, is not to 
the strong alone." Then he shouts his defiant wel- 
come to the inevitable war. One last appeal to the yet 
undecided is given. No gems from classic lore glis- 
ten in this peroration ; only earlier and later Scripture. 
^* Gentlemen may cry. Peace, peace; but there is no 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 9 

peace." Motives ot emulation and shame speak: 
' ' Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand 
we here idle ? ' ' Then, like Joshua of old, he an- 
nounces as his final argument his own irrevocable 
choice. Let others do as they would, for him the 
die was cast, the stand taken. 

This speech shows a mind intimately familiar with 
scriptural phrases. The Bible is that mind's trusted 
classic. In the heat of its passion it seized the fittest 
words available to give utterance to its kindUng vehe- 
mence. With the Bible's aid it could move on swiftly 
with condensed argument and stirring appeal to the goal 
of conviction. Other Kterature was familiar to him ; 
Virgil, Horace, and Livy were more than names to the 
orator. Ancient and modern history was well-nigh a 
passion with him. He leaned, how^ever, on the choicest 
of classics, and he did this as if recognizing its full su- 
periority for the purpose he had in view. It must freely 
be confessed that for that crisis in a people's history, 
when a false hope of peace was to be broken, when the 
ease of a false security must be changed to the exertion 
of a hfe and death struggle, and when the orator must 
speak directly to men's hearts in the language most fa- 
miHar to them, Patrick Henry, with Scripture alone to 
give his arguments and appeals point and power, was 
well equipped. 



lO THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts, was the bright star 
of oratory in the period following the Revolution. 

Mingling as a young man with the 
Fisher Ames founders of the republic, he felt 

and owned the enchantment of their 
greatness. No war on the horizon summoned him to 
fiery appeals. Admiration for the work accomphshed 
by the fathers, patriotic ardor for the rising nationality, 
a statesman's recoil from the insidious influence of 
France, gave complexion to his public life. His elo- 
quence, when spoken, so turned his hearers into the 
channels of thought and feehng along which it flowed, 
that, on one occasion after he had spoken, the House 
of Representatives immediately adjourned, lest the vote 
taken at once, might express only the emotion which 
the orator had excited. His eloquence, when read, is 
so concise and clear in every part, so choice in its 
imagery, so sparkling with thought and imagination 
equally combined, that any tradition of its magic power 
could easily be beUeved. Webster called Fisher Ames 
^^the most eloquent man that ever addressed the 
House of Representatives." A lustre of genius that 
grew more radiant till the end of life, every advantage 
which the age and country afforded, the fireside Bible 
read to him in childhood, ever after through life read 
with fondness for its truth and beauty, classic studies 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE I I 

never suspended, these were his equipments, these 
gave him preparation for a brilHant career. Among 
these, not the least in value, to his mind, was his life- 
long famiharity with Scripture. ^ Often he hazarded the 
assertion, that ' ' no man could become truly eloquent 
who did not love and admire the subhmity and purity 
of the language of the Bible." His style, entirely 
destitute as it was of the peculiar rhythm of the long 
sentence, did not admit of elaborate embellishment. 
Only gems, or fragments of gems — sometimes single 
sparkles from diamonds, not themselves suffered to 
appear, adorn his pages. Conciseness was his reliance 
even at times w^hen fullness and cumulative power 
seemed most fitting, if not required. He met and 
overthrew the argument against the British treaty of 
1796, drawn from the general opposition to it, with 
these lucid thoughts : ' ' The alarm spread faster than 
the publication of the treaty. There were more critics 
than readers. The movements of passion are quicker 
than those of the understanding." Referring to 
Greece in the year 1800, when it was not uncommon 
in lengthening dirge to mourn its lost freedom, he 
called Greece a land ^^}vhere degraded wretches suffer 
scorn till they merit it, where they tread on classic 
ground, on the ashes of heroes and patriots, uncon- 
scious of their ancestry." Into a style such as this, 



12 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

Scripture comes and makes its presence felt. It sup- 
plies a model for a sentence, it lends a figure, it fur- 
nishes a phrase ; but every fragment is carefully as- 
signed an honorable position in the procession of the 
orator's thoughts. From the eulogy on Washington, 
spoken February 8, 1800, before the Legislature of 
Massachusetts, in which is found a volume in condensed 
form and, doubtless, the essence of a hundred patri- 
otic addresses, a few sentences are selected that bear 
some mark of a sacred origin. When the stern disci- 
pline of experience, which did so much to prepare 
Washington for leadership, comes under survey, a 
homely proverb is decked in robes of dignity by the 
aid of Rehoboam's haughty boast, '' Experience bran- 
dishes in her school a whip of scorpions. ' ' Washing- 
ton' s fame at the close of the Revolution is expressed 
thus, '^The measure of his glory was already full. 
There was no fame left for him to excel but his own. ' ' 

During the period of confusion and hastening calam- 
ity under the Confederation, when Washington was in 
private life, the orator hkened the nation to Israel 
when bereft of its sacred ark : '* Washington retired to 
Mount Vernon, and the eyes of the world followed 
him. He left his countrymen to their simplicity and 
their passions, and their glory soon departed. ' ' 

The need of a leader with rarest endowments when 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE I 3 

the change to the Constitution was anxiously pondered 
comes forth thus, scriptural thought its substance, yet 
half concealed. ' ' Some man was wanting who pos- 
sessed a commanding power over the popular passions, 
but over whom those passions had no power. That 
man was Washington. ' ' From this same oration these 
sentences are taken ; ' ' The life of the federal govern- 
ment he (Washington) considered was in ' the breath 
of the people's nostrils'; whenever they should happen 
to be so infatuated or inflamed as to abandon its de- 
fense, its end must be speedy, and might be as tragi- 
cal, as a constitution for France. " " American liberty 
calms and restrains the licentious passions like an angel 
that says to the winds and troubled seas, ' Be still. ' ' ' 
France, in 1800, looming up on the political horizon of 
almost every nation an object of alarm, calls forth this 
description : ' ' She stands, and her ambition measures 
the earth. She speaks, and an epidemic fury seizes the 
nations." The words ^^He spake, and it was done; 
he commanded, and it stood fast," from the book of 
Psalms, might have been the model for this description ; 
or ' ' He stood and measured the earth ; he spake, and 
drove asunder the nations," of the prophet Habak- 
kuk's ode. When the orator approached the subject 
of our disentanglement from the snare of French influ- 
ence, no words of his own seemed adequate to express 



14 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

his reverence for Washington's greatness. '^ I am op 
pressed, and know not how to proceed with my subject. 
Washington, blessed be God, who ' endued him with 
wisdom,' and ^clothed him with power,' Washington 
issued his proclamation of neutrality. ' ' 

The intellectual majesty of Webster is plainly visible 
in the volumes which he left for posterity. The larger 
part of all this literary legacy is the 
Daniel Webster record of spoken words. No one 
can read those volumes, in which the 
whole history, the greatness, the glory, the high hope 
of America are seen as in a mirror, and wonder at the 
brightness of Webster's fame. No one will deny that 
the man who produced such robust, exact, and charm- 
ing literature in pubHc speech fully deserved the world- 
wide homage which he gained in his lifetime. The 
quality of his mind adapted him to great occasions ; 
and great occasions in profusion invited him to exer- 
tion. The possible extinction of one lamp of learning 
stirred up the gift of God within him. The commem- 
oration of a nation's lowly birth, the writing, as with 
letters chiseled on rock, the record of the nation's debt 
to the patriots of Bunker Hill, the battling for his 
country's preservation in those dark hours when friends 
seemed few and dumb — Plymouth, Faneuil Hall, 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE I 5 

Bunker Hill, the wing of the Capitol, the Senate cham- 
ber, such were the themes, such were the places, for the 
display of heaven's rare gifts of eloquence. To de- 
scribe this eloquence a word has been coined from the 
author's name. Rufus Choate said of Webster's style : 
^ ^ It was due to art, to practice, to great examples, to 
Cicero, to Virgil, to our EngHsh Bible, and especially 
to the prophetical writings, and of these, especially to 
Ezekiel. " The repetition of words and phrases for 
emphasis certainly is a characteristic of Webster and of 
the prophet Ezekiel. A few examples will recall this 
feature of both. 

" Let it rise ! Let it rise, till it meet the sun in his 
coming. " " Fortunate, fortunate man. * ' ^ ^ Be as- 
sured, be assured the declaration will stand." **The 
cause, sir, the cause." '^Secession, peaceable seces- 
sion." " Wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody 
city. " * ^ A sword, a sword is sharpened. " ^ ^ I will 
overturn, overturn, overturn it." ^^Thy brethren, 
thy brethren have said. ' ' 

The word ' ' forever ' ' is used above two hundred 
times in our Common version, and often at the end of 
a sentence : 

*^I have chosen and sanctified this house that my 
name may be there forever. " " His name shall endure 
forever, " '' Blessed be his glorious name forever, ' * 



1 6 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

^^The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the 
effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for- 
ever. ' ' 

This word, which looks out into the immeasurable 
future, was congenial to Webster's thought ; he not 
only uses it freely, but he does not fail to put it into 
the position of emphasis, giving heed to models found 
in the Scriptures. From the first oration deUvered at 
Bunker Hill, the following sentences are taken : 

'' We wish that the light of peace may rest upon it 
forever. ' ' 

'' The dominion of European influence on this con- 
tinent, from the place where we now stand to the 
South Pole, is SLnnihilsited forever.'' 

^^They raise their trembHng voices to invoke the 
blessing of God on you and yours forever. ' ' 

This, also, with which the oration ends : 

*^ And, by the blessing of God, may that country 
itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of 
oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of 
liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration 
forever. ' ' 

The great multitude gathered on that historic spot, 
a throng too vast to be wholly reached by even Web- 
ster's voice, is recognized in these words: *^In the 
midst of this ' cloud of witnesses ' we have begun the 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELlKJUENCE 1/ 

work." In the apostrophe to Warren, we hear an 
echo of the psahiiist's description of the eternity of 
God: ''The heavens are the work of thy hands. 
They shall perish, but thou shalt endure ; yea, all of 
them shall wax old Hke a garment, . . but thou art the 
same, and thy years shall have no end. ' ' Seeming to 
yield to his own vivid description of Warren, standing 
so near the spot where Warren fell, Webster finishes 
his sentence in direct address to the hero whom his 
imagination has summoned from the ground : 

How shall I struggle with the emotion that stifles the utter- 
ance of thy name ? Our poor work may perish ; but thine shall 
endure. This monument may moulder away ; the solid ground 
it rests upon may sink down to a level wath the sea,; but thy 
memory shall not fail. 

When to reach a worthy climax in some bold de- 
scription or in some passionate outburst, every other 
resource would seem to fail. Scripture often supplies the 
priceless phrase or sentence which gives at once com- 
pleteness and power to the whole. Here is a descrip- 
tion of the love of religious liberty, taken from the 
Plymouth speech : 

History instructs us that this love of religious liberty — a com- 
pound sentiment in the breast of man, made up of the clearest 
sense of right and the highest conviction of duty — is able to look 
the sternest despotism in the face, and, with means apparently 
most inadequate, to shake "principalities and powers." 

B 



I 8 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

The effect of the Declaration of Independence is 
thus anticipated, in a passage taken from the supposed 
speech of John Adams : 

Read the Declaration at the head of the army. PubUsh it in 
the pulpit ; send it to the public halls. Proclaim it there ; let 
them see it who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the fields 
of Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Concord ; and the very walls will 
cry out in its support. 

The lifework of Adams and Jefferson is set forth in 
this prophetic picture : ^* Their work doth not perish 
with them. The tree which they assisted to plant will 
flourish ; no storm not of force to burst the orb can 
overturn it ; its branches spread wide and its ' top ' is 
destined ^ to reach the heavens.' " The death of Jef- 
ferson on the Jubilee of the repubhc is thus an- 
nounced : ^^Alas! that vision was then closing for- 
ever. Alas ! the silence that was then settling on that 
aged car was an everlasting silence. For, lo, in the 
very moment of our festivities, his freed ' spirit ' as- 
cended ^ to God who gave it.'" When under the 
sting of Senator Hayne's insinuation, the loathsome sin 
of detraction from the just merit or the just fame of 
any man called for an expression of his utter aversion, 
and under his indignant words stood out dark and re- 
pulsive, the supposition that he could be capable of 
committing it, in any place, under any incitement, ends 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 1 9 

with the psahiiist's imprecation upon himself should he 
fail in patriotism or piety, thus: ^^May my tongue 
cleave to the roof of my mouth. ' ' 

The oration delivered at the centennial of Washing- 
ton's birth, closes with a eulogy on American constitu- 
tional hberty. Every conception of this peroration is 
cast in the largest mold. It begins : " Every calamity 
but one, could be repaired." Then the ravages of 
war, the desolations of earthquakes, are recognized and 
declared to be but transient. But ^^Who," he asks, 
*^ shall reconstruct the fabric of demoHshed govern- 
ment ? Who shall rear again the well-proportioned col- 
umns of constitutional hberty ? ' ' The march of these 
solemn questions makes a halt thus : ' ' No ! if these 
columns fall, they will not be raised again." Visions 
of irrecoverable desolation rise, — the Colosseum, the 
^ Parthenon, — over which generations may shed only una- 
vailing tears. How could such a strain be completed ? 
The mournful tone must change. The gloom cast over 
the picture just presented must not be declared wholly 
imaginary ; and the oration, if possible, should close 
with a just hope. He makes an abrupt change from 
the tone of foreboding by imitating an example found 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where, after an appalling 
supposition, the writer adds, '^But we are persuaded 
better things of you " ; so Webster makes his transition 



20 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

to hopefulness, thus: '^But let us hope for better 
things." The full light of day is reached with this 
upward bound : ' ' Let us trust in that gracious Being, 
who has hitherto held our country * in the hollow of his 
hand/ " 

The general waste of waters pictured by the biblical 
record of the dove's failure to find one spot for the sole 
of her foot, gave the pattern for the image with which 
the destructive effects of nulUfication could be set forth 
in the following passage : 

If this South Carolina doctrine should prevail, millions of eyes 
of those who now feed their inherent love of liberty en the suc- 
cess of the American example, would turn away from our dis- 
memberment, and find no place on earth whereon to rest their 
gratified sight. 

This was in reply to Senator Calhoun. Certainly in 
a style hke Webster's, the deluge must appear again in 
some large picture. The flood rises before the orator's 
mind, and lends its aid for the famous speech on the 
compromise measures of 1850, when the calamity which 
secession would cause was held up in contrast with the 
peaceable secession advocated by Southern oratory. 
'^Peaceable secession! sir; your eyes and mine are 
never destined to see that miracle ! The dismemberment 
of this vast country without convulsion ! The breaking 
up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 21 

the surface ! ' ' The storm that lashed the Mediterra- 
nean when the apostle was driven violently on toward 
Rome, day and night terrible to the laboring vessel, 
was in keeping with the orator's thoughts and in har- 
mony with the general peril of March, 1850. That 
storm and that peril come to view in Webster's vehe- 
ment claim of purity of motive in those counsels which 
he knew would meet with denunciation at the North : 

I am looking out for no fragment upon which to float away 
from the wreck, if wreck there must be, but for the good of the 
whole and the preservation of all ; and there is that which will 
keep me to my duty during this struggle, whether the sun and the 
stars shall appear for many days. 

The description of eloquence and the eulogy on 
Massachusetts may be classed among the best exam- 
ples of composition, in which the clearest thought is 
clothed in the most exact and beautiful language. In 
such passages, always brief, there is no room for quota- 
tion. References to any extraneous object would only 
disturb the concentration of thought. Literary in- 
fluence, if active, will be likely to mold the form of the 
whole. It may be too much to claim that Scripture did 
aid in the production of those gems of literature ; but 
it is interesting to note the parallels that can be found 
for them in the two books of the Bible, Job and Eze- 
kiel, said to be the orator's favorites. ^^ True eloquence 



22 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from 
far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they toil in 
vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every 
way, but they cannot reach it." Compare with this 
the passage in Job : 

Man knoweth not the price thereof, neither shall it be found in 
the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me ; and the 
sea saith, It is not in me. It cannot be gotten for gold. . . The 
gold and the crystal cannot equal it, . . No mention shall be 
made of coral, or of pearls. . . The topaz of Ethiopia cannot 
equal it. 

Webster' s eulogy on Massachusetts many a schoolboy 
knows by heart. Its pecuHarity is that a succession of 
large and well-known objects, requiring no description, 
is summoned before the eye : ' ' There she is, behold 
her. There is her history ; the world knows it by heart. 
The past at least is secure. There is Boston and Con- 
cord and Lexington and Bunker Hill, and there they 
will remain forever." Turn to the following passage 
in the thirty-second chapter of Ezekiel, in which the 
prophet hkewise points out great objects for contem- 
plation, nations and tribes gone to the world of the 
dead. 

Asshur is there, and all her company ; his graves are about 
him. . . There is Elam, and all her multitude. . . There is 
Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude. . . There is Edom, her 
kings and all her princes. . . There are the princes of the North. 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 23 

It is hard to believe that this passage, known to have 
been familiar to the orator, did not unconsciously aid 
him when he stood as the champion of his insulted 
State. 

But in the close of his great reply to Senator Hayne, 
which consists of a subHme invocation to God, the pres- 
ence of Scripture helps to form its substance, and as cer- 
tainly furnishes its tone. Are not the purple partition 
of the Hebrew tabernacle and the wish of Hezekiah that 
calamity might not come in his day, woven into the 
texture of the beautiful fabric ? 

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying pros- 
pects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that 
I seek not to penetrate the veil ! God grant that in my day, at 
least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision 
never may be opened what lies behind. 

Edward Everett was a prince in the use of the elab- 
orate and poHshed period. He was a rhetorician even 
more than an orator. Eloquence 
has many types, and Everett's was Edward Everett 
certainly one of them. His style 
was farthest removed from that of Fisher Ames. His 
lines of beauty, while no less perfect, had a larger 
sweep, and around them the ivy often twined. Our 
selections cannot be many ; for some of them will 
necessarily be long. Few sentences so short, and yet 



24 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

SO full of meaning, can be found in Everett's works as 
this one, taken from the eulogy on Lafayette, express- 
ing the French exultation over England's defeat in 
America. '^The heavy reproach of the Seven Years' 
war was rolled away, and the stains of Quebec were 
washed white at Yorktown. ' ' His conceptions are often 
expanded ; their dimensions are displayed by extended 
exhibition. Here is one of them, fully characteristic of 
Everett, and at the same time permeated with Bible 
thought. This is selected from the oration spoken on 
the second centennial of the settlement of Barnstable : 

I see the mountains of New England rising from their rocky 
thrones. They rush forward into the ocean, settling down as 
they advance, and there range themselves a mighty bulwark 
around the heaven-directed vessel ; yes, the Everlasting God him- 
self stretches out the arms of his mercy and his power in sub- 
stantial manifestation, and gathers the meek company of his wor- 
shipers as in the hollow of his hand. 

Everett confronts the vast mystery involved in the long- 
delayed discovery of the Western Hemisphere, thus: 

Stupendous ocean currents, driven westward by the ever-breath- 
ing tradewinds had wheeled their mighty flexures along the Amer- 
ican coast and returned to Europe with tidings of the everlasting 
breakwater that had stopped their way. But the fullness of time 
had not yet come. Assyria and Egypt and Tyre and Carthage 
and Greece and Rome must flourish and fall, before "the seals 
are broken." They must show what they can do for humanity 
before the veil which hides its last hope is lifted up. The ancient 
civilization must " be weighed in the balance and found wanting." 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 25 

Paul, Daniel, John, would recognize some of their 
words here, and doubtless, own that they had been 
well employed. 

The close of Everett's oration on Lafayette is said 
to have exhibited the power of oratory at its height. 
Admiration for the brilliant character kindled as the 
orator produced a succession of word-pictures which 
illustrated the whole checkered career of that noble 
life ; but admiration without doubt found opportunity 
for a full manifestation when the orator delivered his 
apostrophe to the marble bust near by. In this apos- 
trophe scriptural phrases keep company with his 
thoughts and shape their graceful current. ^^ Ye winds 
that wafted the Pilgrims to ^the land of promise,' fan 
in the children's hearts the love of freedom. Blood 
which our fathers shed, ' cry from the ground ' ! 
Speak, speak, marble lips, teach us the love of liberty 
protected by law." Ten years before, Everett had 
given welcome to the aged friend of Washington, when 
he was visiting America at the Jubilee of national inde- 
pendence. Words from the book of Job (29 : 11) 
form its center thus : ' ' Welcome, thrice welcome to 
our shores, and whithersoever your course shall take 
you, throughout the limits of the continent ' the ear 
that hears you shall bless you, the eye that sees you 
shall bear witness to you,' and every tongue exclaim, 



26 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

Welcome, Welcome, Lafayette." David's lament over 
Saul and Jonathan possesses beauty too rare not to be 
borrowed when orator or poet would give honor to 
heroes who have fallen on a nation's field of fame. 
Those who fell in the first battles of the Revolution 
are thus pictured : ^^The old and the young are there, 
the gray-haired veteran, the stripling in the flower of 
youth, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons — they stood 
side by side, and fell together hke ' the beauty of 
Israel on their high places. ' ' ' 

The Fourth of July, 1861, found Edward Everett in 
New York, appointed to speak on the national crisis. 
The suspense, the foreboding of those hours, the 
North scarcely recovered from the shock felt when 
Charleston's guns fired on the flag, led to hesitation, to 
words expressing past belief and former hopes now 
gravely imperiled. Did not Everett speak for the 
North in the following passage ? and did he not find 
help to utter his admiration for the endangered govern- 
ment in conceptions and words pecuhar to the Bible ? 

We did believe in peace, fondly, credulously believed that, ce- 
mented by that mild umpirage of the Federal Union, it might 
dvi^ell forever beneath the fold of the star-spangled banner and 
the sacred shield of a common nationality. That was the great 
arcanum of policy, that was the State "mystery " into which men 
and "angels desired to look," "hidden" from "ages," but "re- 
vealed " to us, — 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 2/ 

Which kings and prophets waited for. 
And sought but never found, — 

a family of States independent of each other for local concerns, 
united under one government for the management of common 
interests and the prevention of internal feuds. 

Rufus Choate. Everett's rival in Boston for literary 
honors, was master of a literary style not less beautiful, 
and far more energetic. Literary 
wealth, gathered in all fields of ele- Rufus Choate 
gant letters, seemed to press upon 
him to be used as he spoke ; and an ear as sensitive as 
a musician's timed and regulated the march of the eager 
procession of thoughts and images. Choate constantly 
read English classics with a view to perfect his command 
of expressive speech. His ardent love of letters made 
this disciphne a joy. Words, figures, choice phrases, 
sparkling jewels of thought, sentences full of majestic 
music or charged with some noble sentiment, found 
their way to his ever-present notebook. With this ample 
collection of flowers and models near at hand, he pre- 
pared his marvelous orations. If he had not recorded 
his constant habit of reading with attention some por- 
tion of the Bible daily, his speeches would reveal the 
lifelong practice ; and that he read it with mind acute, 
wdth fondness for the richness of its language, with 
wonder at its treasures of thought, a careful perusal of 



28 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

any of his orations would easily discover. Whole para- 
graphs are often found in his works permeated with 
biblical conceptions. The influence of any classic upon 
an author could hardly be greater, as witnessed by his 
writings, than the Bible's influence upon Rufus Choate. 
His style, admitting parallel and illustrative allusions 
and comments employed to light up the straight road 
which his main thought traveled, admitting quotation, 
reference, repeated illustration, was particularly open to 
the influence of any literature that he loved. Perhaps 
it would be better to say that his fixed purpose to 
adorn his speech with literary spoils and to fill his 
periods with fight, determined his style. The Bible is 
allowed by its thoughts to aid his argument, by its 
choice words to serve as ornament along the ordinary 
way of that argument ; but when his emotions are 
aroused and his thought mounts boldly upward, then 
fragments of Scripture become the highest steps of his 
ascent, and by their position announce how much the 
orator prized them and how great the help they could 
give. So common is such a use of Scripture that it is 
entirely safe to expect that when the orator's ardor 
begins to glow, it will not come to rest until some Bible 
image appears. 

Colonial memories, the nation's agitation in the 
Forties and the Fifties, and admiration for Webster, 



THE ENGLISPI BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 29 

furnished themes for Choate's most noted orations. A 
few citations from each of these departments will illus- 
trate the subject in hand. It is only just to have in 
mind that nearly every selection forms the climax of a 
resounding period. 

New England in colonial times, its sparse population, 
its rude dwellings, its corn patches surrounded by pri- 
meval forest, he pictures vividly, reaching this close : 
^^ There rose, plain, massive, and deep-set, the base- 
ment stories of our religious, civil, and literary institu- 
tions, beaten against and raged around by many a tem- 
pest and many a flood — yet not falling, for their foun- 
dation was a rock. ' ' A description of the persecution 
of the Puritans, closes with this declaration of its re- 
fining influence: ''It served to raise their thoughts 
above ' the kingdoms ' and kings ' of this world, and 
the glory of them ' to the contemplation of that sur- 
passing ' glory which is to be revealed. ' " In a similar 
way the sufferings of the first settlers are treated : Their 
suiferings ' ' led them to repose their weary and stricken 
spirits upon the strength which upholds the world. 
Thus to be afflicted, thus to profit by affliction, is good 
for a nation as it is good for a man. To neither it is 
'joyous, but grievous' ; to both it is all made up 
over and over again by a ' more exceeding weight of 
glory.' " 



30 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

When the ruling traits of the founders of our nation, 
their sense of duty and spirit of Hberty, claim the 
tribute of admiration, it is given thus : Those men 
were ' ' silent, intense, earnest of force to walk through 
' the furnace of fire, ' yea ' the valley of the shadow 
of death,' to open a path amid the sea, to make the 
' wilderness to bud and blossom as the rose. ' ' ' The 
heroism of the Pilgrims is thus contrasted v/ith Spartan 
heroism at Thermopylae, which was performed under 
the eye of Greece : ''To play the part of heroism on 
its (earth's) 'high places' is not difficult. To do it 
alone ' as seeing him who is invisible ' was the gigantic 
achievement of our age and race of heroism. ' ' Of the 
foes that the forefathers had to meet the orator speaks 
thus : "Their enemies were disease, 'walking in dark- 
ness and wasting at noonday ' ; famine, which, more 
than all other calamity, ' bows the spirit of man ' and 
teaches him what he is ; the wilderness, spiritual foes 
' in the high places of the ' unseen ' world. ' ' ' 

Seldom did a great man have an abler and, at the 
same time, more admiring panegyrist than Webster had 
in Choate. Choate's eulogy on Webster is enough to 
commemorate its author's name and link it with its sub- 
ject. It is a tribute of utmost reverence for man. Web- 
ster's words : "We may praise what we cannot equal and 
celebrate actions which we were not born to perform ' ' 



THE ENGLISH BTRLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 3 I 

need to be supplemented by those of Fisher Ames : 
'^It is perhaps almost as difficult, with judgment and 
feeling, to praise great actions as to perform them. ' ' 
At the time the eulogy on Webster was pronounced, 
sadness and indignation pervaded the North over what 
was then thought to be Webster's base surrender for 
selfish ends to the slave power. The orator felt the 
sadness ; but his task was to remove the shadow from 
his master's fame. To give a view of the quotations 
from Scripture or the references to biblical thoughts in 
this oration would be to give a no very inadequate syn- 
opsis of the whole. AVebster's start in life when, in 
the sleigh with his father, he received, with silent tears 
and hidden face, that father's promise to send him to 
college, "calls out Choate' s characteristic phrase, bor- 
rowed from the Bible, expressing great temporal success 
or power : ' ' That day, that hour, that moment, he set 
out on the long ascent before him, no step backward, 
to ' the high places of the world ' " (Deut. 32 : 13 ; Isa. 
58 : 14). Webster's tenderness of heart appears in 
this notice of his attachment for his brother Ezekiel: 
'' Loving him in hfe, mourning him when dead ^ with a 
love ' and a sorrow very ^ wonderful, passing the love 
of woman.' " His majestic presence as he appeared 
the last time in court, is suggested to the eye. Those 
characteristics by which he became the acknowledged 



32 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

leader of the American bar are summarized, then he 
stands there as he was, ''Every faculty wholly un- 
impaired, ' the eye not dim, nor the natural force 
abated.' " The statesman's moral uprightness is rec- 
ognized by the aid of Paul's speech before FeUx. 
Never from him ''came one doubt cast on 'right- 
eousness, temperance, or judgment to come.' " His 
return to his Marshfield farm to end his days, is 
dressed in poetic conceptions thus : "He came home 
to recover himself before he should ' go hence to be no 
more.' Fashioned from the earth, set to till it, yet 
made 'in the image of his Maker and with a spirit 
that shall not die. ' ' The quiet evening of the states- 
man' s life, so often represented as dark and regretful, 
becomes glorified thus, and the radiance is not suffered 
for a moment to fade, but is rather merged in the day 
of heaven which has no sunset: "Softer and yet 
brighter grew the tints on the sky of parting day, and 
the last Hngering rays, more even than the glories of 
noon, announced how divine w^as the source from 
which they proceeded, how incapable to be quenched, 
how certain to rise on a morning which no night should 
follow." The statesman's thoughts when the end was 
almost in sight are thus gently approached: "With 
what gratitude to God, uttered with unfaltering voice, 
that it was ' appointed unto ' him there ' to die, ' thus 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 33 

leaning on the ^ staff and rod ' of the promise, he 
took his way into the great darkness undismayed, until 
^ death should be swallowed up of life. ' ' ' 

The defense of Webster's course in 1850, ^Svhen,'* 
as Choate once said, ' ' that sea of March ' wrought and 
was tempestuous,' " presses its conclusion in triumph, 
yet avoiding the tone of conscious victory, by imitating 
Paul' s Christian mildness thus : 

Until the accuser who charges him, now that he is in his 
grave, with having sinned against his own conscience, will assert 
that he is certain that the consummate science of our great states- 
man was felt by himself to prescribe to his morality another con- 
duct than that which he adopted, and that he thus consciously 
outraged that "sense of duty which pursues us ever," is he " not 
inexcusable, whoever he is, that so judges another " ? 

*' Stand by us this once," he said at the end of his 
arraignment of the so-called Texas scheme, " this once ! 
Another time, on other subjects, we can quarrel, but 
not now j not now, when the legions throng up to the 
' city of David ' and the engines thunder at its gate. 
Another time we can ' sleep on and take our rest, ' but 
not now." 

The year before he died, less than three years before 
the cannon in Charleston harbor announced that the 
conflict of arms had begun, Choate delivered an oration 
on American Nationality. Many times with motives of 
expediency and fear he had struggled to stay the pro- 



34 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

gress of the anti-slavery agitation, and by resistance had 
learned that the stream was rapidly becoming a river 
mighty enough to carry everything but the hills before 
it. With no exultation, with no serene complacency, 
but as under an impending calamity, he spoke. But at 
the end a hopeful tone is attempted thus : 

Why do I seem to fear ? This shadow that flits across our 
grasses and is gone, — this shallow ripple that darkens the surface 
of our broad and widening stream and passes away, — this little 
perturbation which our telescopes cannot find, and which our 
science can hardly find, but which we know cannot change the 
course or hasten the doom of one star, — have these any terror for 
us? And He, who "slumbers not nor sleeps," who "keeps" 
watchfully "the city " of his love, on whose will the life of nations 
is suspended and " to whom all the shields of the earth belong," 
our fathers' God, is he not our God, and "of whom" then and 
of what ' ' shall we be afraid ' ' ? 

Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, dehvered the 
oration at the fifth jubilee of the landing of the Pil- 
grims, also at the centennial of Amer- 

Robert C. Win- ^^^^ Independence at Boston, and, 
like Webster at the monument at 
Bunker Hill, spoke at the laying of the corner-stone 
and at the completion of the National Monument to 
Washington. Not one of these finished productions 
would escape mutilation if quotations from the Bible 
should be torn away. 

In the second oration at Washington eight citations 



THK ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 35 

of Scripture are given prominence. The monument, in 
its unfinished state, seemed '^an abomination of deso- 
lation standing where it ought not.'* *^ Divided, 
Weighed in the balance, Found wanting," through 
those years of sectional animosity and bloodshed, the 
orator said, could almost be read on its sides. At last 
younger hearts and hands than those which laid the 
foundation ' ' have brought forth the capstone with 
shoutings." One name in American history is above 
all other names. Those imperishable words from Henry 
Lee, of Virginia, through the hps of John Marshall, 
' ' First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his 
countrymen," will be heard inevery century, in every 
clime, in every tongue, ^^till time shall be no more." 
Washington ' ' was of clean hands and a pure heart, ' ' 
'^of unwearied wdllingness 'to spend and to be spent 
for ' his country. " " The monument may fall a wreck, 
but the hfe is secure ; God be praised, that character is 
ours forever." Some good idea of this oration, its 
topics and their treatment, might easily be given by 
telling how these fragments of Scripture are woven into 
its texture. 

The follo^\dng passage on Plymouth Rock, certainly 
far from commonplace, reveals as clearly how sacred 
words offered their majesty and beauty to elevate the 
orator' s thoughts : 



36 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

That one grand Rock, even then without its fellow along the 
shore, and destined to be without its fellow on any shore through- 
out the world, — Nature laid it, the Architect of the universe 
laid it, *'when the morning stars sang together and all the sons 
of God shouted for joy." There it had reposed, unseen of human 
eye, the storm and floods of centuries beating and breaking upon 
it. There it had reposed, awaiting the slow-coming feet, which 
guided and guarded by no mere human power, were to make it 
famous forever. The Pilgrims trod it, as it would seem, uncon- 
sciously, and left nothing but authentic tradition to identify it — 
"Their Rock was not as our Rock." Their thoughts at that hour 
were upon no stone of earthly mold. If they observed at all 
what was beneath their feet, it may, indeed, have helped them 
still more fervently to lift their eyes to him who had been pre- 
dicted and promised "as the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
land." Their trust was only in the " Rock of Ages." 

The oration spoken at Boston in 1876, closes with 
these words : 

The last phrase to pass my lips at this hour and to take its 
chance for remembrance or oblivion in years to come, as the con- 
clusion of this centennial oration, and the sum and summing up 
of all I can say to the present or the future shall be : There is, 
there can be, no independence of God. " In him," as a nation, no 
less than in him as individuals, " we live and move and have our 
being." God save our American States ! 

Charles Sumner, scholar, statesman, orator, found the 
great occasion of his Hfe in the Senate of the United 
States. He represented with zeal the 
Charles Sumner sober and deep sentiments and con- 
victions of New England, which were 
growing every day more intense in opposition to slavery. 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 3/ 

The subject was great even to appalling proportions, and 
it affected the whole nation for its whole future. Sumner' s 
speeches enkindled both exultation and wrath. But the 
threats against the senator's Hfe, the blows that at last laid 
him insensible on the floor of the Senate chamber, bear 
\\itness, as no words of praise could, to the force with 
which he hurled his philippics against the Nebraska bill. 
In those hours when the strength of battle was turned 
against the slave in all high places, Sumner read plainly 
signs of the better times to come. Bending before the 
forces which were having their day, he yet was able to 
declare his belief in a brighter prospect for freedom. 
Words from the Bible, of course, will appear in any 
vision of faith : 

The great omens are with us. The discussion will proceed. 
The devices of party can no longer stave it off. The subterfuges 
of the politician cannot escape it. WTierever an election occurs, 
there this question will arise. WTierever men come together to 
speak of public affairs, there again will it be. No political 
Joshua, with miraculous power, can " stop the sun in his course " 
through the heavens. It is even now *' rejoicing as a strong man 
to run its race ' ' ; and will yet send its beams into the most distant 
plantation, aye, sir, and melt the chains of every slave. 

Standing almost alone, abandoned by Everett and 
other senators from New England, John P. Hale ex- 
cepted, — not altogether on account of the principles 
advocated, but certainly in part because of the violence 



38 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

of the advocate, — Sumner with consummate courage 
fought to the last. In final protest against the bill, he 
availed himself of the thoughts most solemn and most 
vast, at the same time apphcable, at his command. The 
sacred book furnished them. 

From the depths of my soul, as a loyal citizen and as a senator, 
I plead, remonstrate, protest against the passage of this bill. I 
struggle against it as against death, but as in death itself, "cor- 
ruption puts on incorruption " and *' this mortal body puts on 
immortality," so from the "sting" of this hour, I find assurances 
of that triumph by which Freedom will be restored to her immortal 
birthright in the Republic. 

The larger fame of Lincoln as president naturally 
enough has turned attention away from his just fame as 

an orator. Lincoln rose from ob- 
Abraham Lincoln scurity by his spoken words. By 

his prophet-hke utterance of politi- 
cal wisdom in direct, uncolored, original speech, he 
moved his troubled and distracted countrymen till they 
echoed his name from Maine to Oregon. Unschooled, 
but not uneducated, he worked with persistent energy 
at the problems which troubled the nation. In the po- 
litical speech of his time, sophistries had become plen- 
tiful, and many of them passed unchallenged. Ancient 
boundaries of straightforward justice and honor were 
hidden from many eyes. To Lincoln's mind, a distorted 
truth was a monstrosity ; when he had spoken, truth 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 39 

Stood erect and commanding. What force upheaved 
on the rude frontier this psychological marvel — refined 
in heart, but destitute of the tinsel of refinement ; rest- 
less to rise, but never losing his sympathy with the 
poorest of men ; filled with the loftiest sentiments and 
moved by a charity seldom surpassed ? He was Lincoln 
before he was nominated for the presidency. His genius 
and mental discipline were manifest when he first ap- 
peared in Springfield. In any study of Lincoln's rise 
in the world, it is worthy of note that his early life bore 
some resemblance to that of the fathers in colonial days ; 
the same hardships, the same incentives to better his 
condition, the same poverty of books, the same access 
to the one full source of moral and intellectual life. 
Such conditions produce the statesmen, commanding in 
character, in wisdom, in speech, who under a beneficent 
Providence, established the American government. 

The eloquence of Abraham Lincoln owed much to 
his high moral character. The directness, the openness 
which scorned all disguises, the high principle every- 
where recognized, the fairness which justified the unoffi- 
cial title of nobility freely accorded him — all were 
Uneaments of a noble nature, and not a small part of 
his equipment for the leadership of his generation. Who 
will fail to trace these manifest characteristics to the 
Bible of his boyhood and early manhood ? Every one 



40 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

recognized the prominence of Scripture in the language 
of Lincoln. He used thoughts and words which the 
Bible furnished him, not merely to adorn his speeches, 
but to aid in their very construction. He quoted Scrip- 
ture as a final authority, and gave sacred words significant 
apphcations. ' ' ' A house divided against itself cannot 
stand. ' I beheve this government cannot endure per- 
manently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the 
house to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to 
fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. ' ' 
These sentences were echoed and re-echoed in every 
county of the State of Illinois during the famous Doug- 
lass and Lincoln debates. ' ' He who is not for us is 
against us. He who gathereth not with us scattereth," 
he urged during the campaign of 1859. This habit 
continued to the end. His latest addresses, evidently 
prepared with the greatest care, give even clearer illus- 
tration of the help which may be drawn from the Bible 
in producing effective and finished speech. Two frag- 
ments of the second inaugural address will serve the 
end in view : 

It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just 
God's assistance in wringing his bread from the sweat of other 
men's faces. But let us "judge not that we be not judged." . . 
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge 
of war may speedily pass away ; yet, if God wills that it continue 
till all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 4 1 

years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the 
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be 
said, that "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether. ' ' 

It would not be fitting to conclude even this brief 
notice of Lincoln's eloquence without some reference 
to the address delivered at Gettysburg ; for that address 
alone is enough to establish Lincoln's fame for elo- 
quence. The brevity of that speech at first occasions 
surprise ; after reflection upon its words, its fullness 
surprises more. Only two hundred and sixty- eight 
words were spoken, but what honor to the dead, what 
appeals to the living, what high patriotism, what clear 
announcement of the solemn issue in the war, find 
ample place ! A single quotation is made, — ^^all men 
are created equal," — all else is Lincoln's work. But 
the builder of this composition found materials well 
adapted to his purpose. Only a mind famiUar with 
biblical conceptions and biblical words could have put 
so much sublimity in so small a compass. The phrases 
that bear the impress of the Bible, given in the order 
in which they occur, will recall almost the whole address 
to minds at all familiar with it. Thus : 

*' Four score and seven years ago. . . Our fathers brought forth 
a nation . . . conceived in liberty . . . can long endure . . . 
gave their lives that the nation might live. . . Dedicate, conse- 



42 THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

crate, hallow this ground. . . The dead shall not have died in 
vain ... a new birth of freedom." And the thrilling close: 
"government of the people, by the people, and for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth." 

This last citation will bring to mind Paul's similar 
phrases, also used in concluding an address, ^ ' Of him, 
and through him, and to him, are all things ; ' ' and 
the exact words of the book of Job, ' ' His remembrance 
shall perish from the earth. ' ' 

The Bible, both as a storehouse of truth and as a 
storehouse of Hterature, is thus seen to contribute to the 
elevated tone of Lincoln's eloquence. No other influ- 
ence is so clearly seen. With literary training such as 
Everett, Choate, and Webster enjoyed, he would have 
wielded a different style ; but as it is, that style has a 
strength and beauty peculiar to itself, evidently due in 
large measure to the influence of the English Bible. 

Our study has been extended enough to show some 
portion of the pervasive power of the Bible of our 
fathers over the generations of their children, and to 
exhibit a little of the acknowledged wealth which it 
contains. More extended study, both in this branch 
of American Hterature and in other branches would, we 
beUeve, only deepen whatever impressions have been 
produced by this limited survey. 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE IN AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 43 

It would not be easy to overrate the influence in 
America which the English Bible, considered merely as 
a literary treasure, has exerted. The Bible has been 
here since the first clearing was made. It came in its 
completed form, the growth of centuries, and ready for 
centuries of service. It has been read, generation after 
generation, by childhood and old age. It contains the 
rarest specimens of nearly every form of composition. 
Images of grandeur, gems of poetry, sweet simphcity 
of narrative, pathos unattempted but irresistible, are 
scattered with a lavish hand in every part. Its phrases 
have passed into common speech. In two hundred and 
fifty years, scarcely any of its words have become obso- 
lete. ' ' It lives in the ear like a music that can never 
be forgotten. ' ' 

To discharge to the very last mite its obligation to the 
Bible, American eloquence would be compelled to vex 
its surface and trouble its depths. What borrowed 
ornaments would be given up ! What large and serious 
thoughts, underlying pages, would be torn away ! What 
changes in the marching tune of many a paragraph and 
many an appeal ! What ruthless desolation made on 
the heights of its grandeur ! The indebtedness is one 
to be acknowledged but can never be discharged. 



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